Artistic stylisation

For this project we need to fit the visuals to a dark yet innocent style of approach to the animation. To do this we first need real evidence of visual reference, as it would be foolish to create these images that we have seemingly started without any inspirational solid background.

Here are a few Cartoons which I think work within the realms of imagery that we should be working within.

• Dark:

1. Ren and Stimpy

This rather dark Cartoon was once a main feature on Cartoon Network. Somehow it's sinister undertone was overlooked and it was classed as a daytime children's TV show. I find it amusing but it is full of disturbing undertones and imagery. The character design in this is simplistic, over exaggerated and their colour schemes are more evil, primal an in appearanc. You could easily make these characters become evil henchmen 

Here is an image of the toilet in which the little girl hides

Sound scapes for trailer

Here are some of the sound scapes for the trailer, the first being where we look out onto the City through the Ghost Detectives window, to then the scene inside his Office.


City Soundscape by Darkart

This second sound is where the detective has gone to the School to investigate the ghostly goings on and encounters the evil school girl who seeks revenge on any adult who gets in their way as she blames them for not helping her when she was bullied badly at school.

Inside and Outside school sounds by Darkart

Additional logo (old) concept

A few low budget uncanny horror films

Here we can see the 1977 film "The Uncanny", which is about how Cat's are evil supernatural beings who are actually able to control the world around them for their own advantage. It is said in the movie that Cat's are said to be the Devil in disguise, a notion which can refer to the concept of a Witches black Cat.

The Cat's seem to take revenge on the people who get in the way of their Masters or themselves, whenever something stands in their way they stop at nothing to put thing's back the way they want it.



Amusingly, sticking with this subject of evil Cat's I found a more modern Korean film entitled "The Cat's" which again conveys Cat's as an evil source of influence and power. It has a lot of comparisons to the film "The Uncanny", feels more paced and jumpy which is more than enough to put you off your little feline friend for good. It is jumpy and full of good attempts at building anticipation.



This film throws together the slightly quirky, uncanny elements of the above films, however puts the audience into the first person perspective that The Blair Witch Project does. Grave encounters is set within an abandoned Mental Hospital that is reported to have paranormal activity occurring within so a young team of enthusiastic investigators decide to go out and discover the truth for themselves. In the film it is said this was the "last episode of the series" from the team that was never aired to the public for 6 year's... until now. Just like in the group project, films like this could really help to show the simple nature of uncanny scares that this group project should aim for. It is easy to approach the film using footage in this way as it can be done requiring less of an extravagent storyline and large amount of characters.

Group project update: 01 December 2011

As many have been aware this project seemed to take a slow start, communication being an issue which slumped the structure of the team into no man's land - a chaotic mess of not knowing where to turn or fire. The way in which this has been overcome was by finally pulling together, discussing this issue with a firm agreement to the concept we need to perform together more to help keep the work flow more consistent and so we feel in full mind with knowledge in what we are creating.

I believe it is important to note that we are now a man down as unfortunately Matt Munday has decided to leave the course entirely, we wish him luck in his future endeavours.

As a result of this, the work load has been revised over and brought down to a more realistic if not better project overall. We plan to keep within our genre playing feild of Film Noir and Horror, yet approaching with less vagueness about the storyline, giving the audience an idea of why the characters are in their situation and then throwing out suspensive moments from within the film. This should leave the audience with a "feel" for the films pursuit which as a whole should play on their mind and anticipate them to want to see more.

To make this project less work than it currently is we have also decided to narrow down the amount of characters to two. This has in some way's morphed the storyline into a more lonely, dread filled horrorific atmosphere which makes it easier to meet our deadline plus deliver a better feeling peice overall. The original script had the characters searching for the girl while she is in the proccess of actively commiting such acts, now it is one character searching for the girl after she has commited multiple acts of evil, almost as if this is more so an investigation into a Demonic haunting.

We have decided to keep our opening shot of the "Dectective" with his breif monoluge to inform the audience into why the Detective must go to the School and what the issue around the little Girl is about. It will go into the School via a headline on a newspaper, in which the Headline will further help the audience to grasp the concept of the overall plot. The camera will zoom into the picture of the High School, which will "come to life" as a scene where the trailer will start to take place within the grounds of the School under the intense, uncanny enviroment that the Girl lurks within. It is from this moment that we suddenly feel more alone and under the watchful eye of an evil, chilling character which turns the genre from Noir to Horror pretty quickly.

Chris and Dave
Freemind Animations

3D Set Design Progress

Initial Street Scene

The establishing shot of our trailer. It needs to establish our theme and get peoples attention, so I've tried to make it quite grand in scale and the camera angle is off at an angle much like a number of shots from Touch of Evil and various other Film Noirs. The idea is that the camera starts low down by a man hole and rises with steam up towards the detectives window.

Early school corridor progress

Much more to do here, reference has been built up now, This scene will be used in various forms to depict different areas of the school, change of prop here, different texture there.

School entrance for establishing shot.

Yet More progress on the street scene, this has been held up on account of my computer crashing, but its just about getting back to what it was, I've since been saving after every tiny tweak I make, my computers deceptive, it hasn't crashed in some time.

As you can see, the scenes getting there and the more I model, the easier it becomes to build as many features can be used over and over such as windows, fire escapes, lamp posts, you get the idea.

Once modeled to a fair degree I think we ought to texture these using line drawings, and image planes, we can then experiment with camera moves, thus making both our storyboard and pre-vis, once these aspects are resolved we can then take the textures we have already created and refine them, add any features we feel necessary after closer scrutiny and replace character image planes with fully modeled  and rigged characters

IMPORTANT POST FOR TEAM

Hey guys, its Chris. I have a good feeling about the way this project could go, however we really need to pick it up - not saying what we have contributed together or what we have done is bad at all but I mean we need to work together as a team more, theres an unjust amount of work as a result. Some peices of work even still remain unseen due to an unorganised flow of desicions. We need to change this laid back attitude FAST - we have 8 weeks left. So far this project has been pretty sporadic overall when it comes to attending get togethers, I think we can count the amount of times we have got together on one hand and for 10 weeks in thats not good!

I have organised a meeting with the tutors to discuss our position and to give us job roles and to help analyse our current progression with the unit.

All the best
Chris